Never Left Hanging (bithday weekend repeat #2)

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith in God. It emphasizes the power of God's word and the importance of developing strong faith through daily exposure to it. It emphasizes that God is a God of blessing, love, and growth, and that he answers our prayers. It also discusses the authority and power believers have through Jesus and the importance of seeking God's will and aligning our desires with his. It encourages believers to trust in God, remove anything that hinders their relationship with him, and approach him through Jesus. It highlights the generosity and abundance of God and the principle of sowing and reaping. It emphasizes the importance of spiritual renewal and prospering in our spirit, and the role of Jesus' authority and power in making things happen. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Daniel 10.12 Then he said to me, Don't be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard. I have come for your words' sake. The Lord doesn't keep us hanging. From the moment we seek him, he is there. He is doing things. From the moment we accept his authority and power, we are enabled to receive them. From the moment we believe on Jesus as the one and only Son, sacrificed and risen from the dead to life as our Savior, we are saved. The Lord doesn't keep us hanging. God is a God of blessing, of love, and of growth. He doesn't wait around. He is a God of abundance. He doesn't tease us or make us grovel or teach us a lesson through sickness or pain. He wants us well, blessed, whole, and functioning yesterday, last week even. He wanted it for us before we asked. He wanted it before the world was made, Ephesians 1.4. He hears us. He answers us. He answers us in the moment of our asking. The trouble is always something else, either ourselves or assignments of the enemy to hinder us. Both of those sound bad. Take heart. We are not under the old covenant. We aren't operating in an environment of sin that needs to be covered for the shame of its nature, Genesis 2.25. We are believers, not only of the Lord Most High, but in all of his works, the work of Jesus, the only begotten Son on the cross, 1 Corinthians 1.18. That gives us a huge advantage over any and all circumstances that we might find ourselves in. By grace, through faith, we have been reborn into a new being, Ephesians 2.8-9. A righteous being, having the nature of Christ through Christ, that walks in the authority and power of the Holy Spirit who indwells us, Romans 13.1-4. We are ordained by God to use the authority of God here on earth, Romans 13.1. Our task is to abide in him and seek his will so that we can understand what we are to do and what we can do, John 15.4. And what we can do is anything he asks us to. We need to believe in his word. Every problem that could ever be, has ever been, or might ever be, has an answer in the word of God. The principles of God cover every single eventuality. The answer to what to do is in the word. The faith to believe in those answers is also in the word. Faith comes by hearing the word, Romans 10.17. It's what we use to strengthen ourselves. If you never use your muscles, they are not going to be able to accomplish anything. If you are not hearing the word on a daily basis, your faith muscles are not going to develop. You will be weak faith. That's what Jesus always said. Why do you have such weak faith? Why the weak faith? Why little faith? It's not a volume of faith. It's the strength of your faith. And faith comes by hearing the word. Now we use that faith to do what is set before us. We don't need a lot. We don't need a volume because it doesn't take a lot. Mark 4.31. Need healing? Believe it. Need prosperity? Believe it. Need to bind a devil or an assignment against you? Believe in the authority of the name of Jesus to do it. Whatever we seek, we will find. Matthew 7.7-8. It's not volume. It's strength. Totally, absolutely convinced. It's your expectation. But the question with our seeking is, are we seeking for selfish purpose or for God's purpose? Intent and imagination mean a lot in the kingdom. We are to be in agreement with the word. If you pray by the word, believing on the word, in accordance with the word, you literally cannot go wrong. It is when we don't believe, when we're not fully persuaded, when we can't see ourselves well because we are dwelling so much on our sickness, when we're listening to what our body says, not what the word says. We can't see ourselves delivered from anxiety because we've made it too much of our mental landscape and worldview. We can't receive X because we're so bitter and unforgiving to someone else. The problem is almost always us. God answers us right away. Devil causing you an issue, bind them up or cast them out through the power of the name of Jesus. The name, everything with a name has to bow to. Philippians 2, 9 to 11. I'm not talking placing chains on the enemy or agents of the enemy, binding them up like a prisoner and casting them into the outer darkness forever and ever. That's not our job. That's not our authority. You got to think of it in legal terms. In this instance, covering these circumstances, issue a restraining order against those coming against you. That's the principle. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the principle. Stopping them this time, this way, in this circumstances. We have that authority. They are the powers of the air or the heavens, not heaven, the abode of God, but the heavens. We can bind things in the heavens. Matthew 18, 18 to 20. We can loose angelic forces into the heavens by asking the Father, not by commanding angels herself. That is not our authority. Now, in Jesus, by Jesus, and through Jesus, we have all the victory we need. We wield the name above all names according to the will and the word of the Lord. John 5, 19 to 20. It's what Jesus did. It's what we're called to do. Now, can you see the advantage we have over Daniel? He was in the old covenant. He had to seek the face of God in a different way. He had to fast and pray and expand real effort. What he received was an angelic messenger, the word from the Lord. We don't have to do that. Yes, there is value in fasting. Yes, there is value in expending real effort to seek God. Yes, we need to pray. But we're not calling up to heaven to get a messenger. We're talking to someone beside us. We're addressing the Lord who lives within us. Or don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 to 20. We don't even need to know what to pray in advance. That's how much of a helper we have in Holy Spirit. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don't know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can't be uttered. He who searches the heart knows what is on the Spirit's mind because he makes intercession for the saints according to God. Romans 8, 26 to 27. We are in a place of fellowship with the Lord if we'll take the time to fellowship with him. We don't need to wait for an angelic messenger, although one might show up. We get to hear the voice of the Lord. Now this isn't baby steps. This is stepping out in faith. It doesn't matter how much you know. If you won't walk it, you're still a child in the Spirit. When you decide to start walking this, doing this, willing to believe regardless of what you see because God's Word says it is so, then you start your adult spiritual journey. That is when the adventure begins. The Lord will answer you when you decide to seek him for an answer humbly, with a heart full of praise. If you haven't received, search your heart. Search your intentions. Search for where your thoughts have been dwelling. Proverbs 23, 7, 27, 19, and Matthew 6, 21. Remove everything that is between you and God. Turn your heart to him and unplug your thoughts from the world. Get further from it and closer to the Lord. Abide in him and in the joy of his righteousness. Make his things your things, his desires your desires. We aren't assailing heaven's gates here. They're open to us. We get to walk into the throne room of God and talk to him face to face. Hebrews 4, 16. But we can only do it through Jesus. He is our righteousness. Romans 3, 21 to 31. We cannot do it in our name. We must do it in his name. God is righteous and holy. But we approach him in Jesus. It is our legal right of inheritance. Don't be afraid. Nothing bad comes from the Lord. Nothing. Trust him. He won't let you down. Our daily affirmation of God's love is 2 Corinthians 9, 6 to 9. The Lord is a generous God. A God of abundance. A loving, giving, blessing God. Why? Because he loves us and wants us to be satisfied. Not just okay, but fully, totally, and completely satisfied. Full to bursting all the time. It's obvious when you deal with him. It's also obvious by looking at the laws that he has put in place. So, well, reap abundantly. Every farmer is familiar with the process. It's an example, a microcosm of his system. A principle that works every time. That's what a law is. No matter who uses it. That's where the world gets the idea of manifest it. It's screaming into the void and begging for something to materialize and not caring who provides it or the cost of it. It's spending money to make money. It's a poor man's version of sowing and reaping. Me? I'd rather stand on scripture and walk in the authority of Jesus' name which makes things happen. The manifesting is only the physical end product. The main deal is spiritual renewal and our spirit prospering mightily. It's the authority and power of Jesus that makes these things happen. Why? Because Jesus wants them to happen. He wants us to have and to have abundantly. Not out of our selfish desires to have things. That never works. But out of his desire to bless us with good things. Helpful things. Things that make us better. Things that put us in a place regardless of position in life or money in the bank. To bless others. To help those around us. Seek him and his righteousness and see all the things that will be added to us as a by-product of that relationship. Matthew 6, 31-34 See how he will start using you to bless those around you even as you are blessed. As we close, remember that you have birth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I... Now you fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that he loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us By this, God's love was revealed in us that God has sent his only born son into the world that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because he first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.